


Before the Hut on the Rock

by amberflurie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cokeworth, Hogwarts, Hogwarts First Year, Letters, Severus Snape Has a Heart, technically major character death but y'all knew that was coming (canon)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:02:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28888050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberflurie/pseuds/amberflurie
Summary: Before Vernon takes the family to the hut out on a rock at sea, they stop in the town of Cokeworth. What if Harry met another magical person who still spent his summers in Cokeworth?Harry meets Severus Snape before Hogwarts.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Severus Snape
Comments: 3
Kudos: 108





	Before the Hut on the Rock

_Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. Dudley and Harry shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Dudley snored but Harry stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering. . ._

As Harry sat, he wondered where the letters could be coming from. Who would want to be writing to him so badly? Would they still be able to find him here in this town? Aunt Petunia had called the city Cokeworth, which he thinks is where she grew up. Maybe it was this town where his parents crashed their car and killed themselves. It could have been on the street outside this hotel for all he knew. Harry was suddenly gripped by the desire to leave the hotel and see the city – to have some connection to his parents even if they were useless layabouts. He was used to making his own way places – the Dursleys had left him in London once and he had managed to take care of himself until they came back to find him hours later.

Harry hopped lightly off the windowsill and crept over to peer at Dudley. His cousin was on his back, snoring loudly with his mouth open – he didn’t look like he would be waking up anytime soon. Harry pulled his ratty sneakers out from where he had tucked them under the bed so Dudley could not do anything to them and pulled his jeans back on. He swiped the room key from the table near the door and opened the door as quietly as he could.

Harry closed the door lightly behind him, turning to face the outside world once it was closed and locked. The air was muggy near the river of the old industrial town where the hotel was. There were rail tracks near the hotel and Harry walked along them towards the houses he could see up ahead.

The outside world was quiet except for the passing cars on the nearby road and Harry made sure to stay out of the way so that a car’s lights would not shine on him and make his presence known. As he got closer to the houses, he felt something wash over him with a shiver. A full body shiver that gave him goosebumps and made his arm hair stand on end. It made him pause on the edge of the residential streets, but nothing else seemed to happen so he continued walking.

The houses there were grimy and brick as he entered a street called Spinner’s End, a street where the chimney from the nearby mill loomed overhead. He wondered where his mother’s house was. Had she grown up here? The dirty houses were a prison of a different kind than his little cupboard. As he continued down to the end of the street, he came to an abrupt halt when the door of the last house was wrenched open. Harry quickly hid behind a bin that was overflowing with rubbish at a house two doors down and hoped he was not about to be discovered.

A man stepped outside the open door, with black hair that seemed to shine in the light of one of the working streetlamps. He was tall, at least as tall as Uncle Vernon, but with a much scarier scowl. He was dressed in black trousers with a black long-sleeved shirt and there was a slim black stick loosely grasped in his pale hand. Harry tried to shift back further behind the bin – he had had a teacher who favored a slap with a ruler across his hands in his first year of primary school and that stick of wood the man was holding was suspiciously similar. Unfortunately, when he had adjusted his position, he rattled the bin, which seemed to absolutely full of alcohol bottles based on the sound. The black-haired man whipped his head in Harry’s direction and then – to his horror – began to descend the steps of his home. The man stepped out into the street with his stick of wood raised.

“I can hear you – whoever you are. I felt you pass through my wards a few minutes ago,” said the man, still taking steps towards Harry’s bin.

_What are wards?_ Harry thought. His heart was pounding erratically, and he felt like he did right before he ended up on the school roof when he was running from Dudley. Harry slowly brought himself into a crouch and got ready to run, thanking all the years of Harry Hunting. There was no way the man would be able to catch him – Harry was small and could slip between fence posts and clamber over obstacles. Harry sprang up and began sprinting back up the street, hoping the man wouldn’t try to follow –

Harry felt all of the muscles in his body suddenly freeze and he fell over heavily onto the dirty pavement. He couldn’t move anything! Harry felt his breathing speed up as the man’s footsteps came closer and closer. Why couldn’t he move?!

He felt the man crouch down beside his head and flip his frozen body over. The man glowed a sickly yellow in the streetlamps, his prominent nose casting shadows over the rest of his face. He lifted his stick to point at Harry’s face and a light shot out of the tip. Harry had never seen Star Wars, but he had heard about it and wasn’t there something about shooting lights in that movie? What was happening? The boy felt a warmth brush over his frozen body, but nothing else seemed to happen. The man’s brow furrowed in confusion before he apparently came to some sort of decision. He waved his stick again, and Harry felt his body lift off the hard ground. He knew his eyes must be as large as saucers, but he was just so astonished by what was happening. Was he dreaming back on that hotel windowsill?

His body floated in front of the man and was carried into the house at the end of the street, where he was deposited onto a threadbare sofa on a room that was absolutely covered in books. Harry’s eyes flew around the room trying to take everything in before he felt the frozen-ness of his face disappear. The man stepped in front of him, barely illuminated in the dim lighting. Harry’s heart was almost pounding out of his chest. He was stuck in the house of a scary stranger and he couldn’t move!

“Who are you? How did you find this house?” asked the man in a deadly soft voice.

“I didn’t – I’m sorry – sir, I was just – just walking,” Harry stuttered out.

“Don’t take me for a fool boy! No one can cross those wards without being known and trusted by me and I don’t know who you are!” the man said loudly.

“Wards?” Harry asked, his curiosity getting the better of him despite the fearsome circumstances.

“Don’t play dumb with me! Nothing turned up on the revealing spell, but I know there must be some sort of disguise to make you look this young, whoever you are!”

“I’m sorry – sir – I really don’t know what’s happening! My name is Harry Potter and – “

Harry had to cut himself off immediately as the stick of wood pressed into his neck and the man brought his pale face close to his.

“Who would use Harry Potter as a disguise to get to my home?” the man mused in a dangerous voice.

“Sir – it’s not – not a disguise! I am Harry Potter!” Harry said, tears of fear and frustration beginning to leak out of his eyes. He tried to stem the flow, memories of Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia yelling at him for being a baby and crying.

The man used the tip of his stick to lift the bangs the were plastered to his forehead with fearful sweat, until he saw the lightning bolt scar Harry had under them. His face changed in an instant, becoming dumbfounded as he stared. He flicked the wood again and the room was suddenly illuminated with light. The man peered intently into Harry’s eyes and it looked like it was causing him great pain to do so.

“You’re Harry Potter?” he breathed.

“Er yes – sir – I am?” Harry responded, unintentionally ending his words with a questioning tone. “Do you know me somehow?”

The man sneered, whatever softness in his face quickly shuttering. “Of course, I know who the blasted boy-who-lived is! Who doesn’t know who you are?”

Harry stared at the black-haired man and tentatively said, “Er – who is the boy-who-lived?”

The tall man now appeared to have a permanently deepening sneer on his face as he said, “Don’t play stupid with me, boy! Has all that fame already gone to your head? What are you even doing here in Cokeworth?”

“My relatives – they brought us here. There were a bunch of letters and my uncle went kinda crazy and drove us all out here to escape them.” Harry said. He wasn’t sure if he should be bringing up the letters with this stranger, but Harry was tired and scared and out of sorts.

The man just looked bewildered now, “Why would you be running from your Hogwarts letter?”

“My what?”

“Your Hogwarts letter you dunderhead! Don’t you want to come lord your fame over your peers?”

Harry was now feeling quite desperately confused, and it just kept getting worse as the conversation continued. “I’m sorry sir I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, hoping he wasn’t about to get slapped like he would with Vernon and Petunia.

The man sat down heavily on the chair opposite the sofa that Harry was on and looked at him in disgruntled confusion. “Didn’t Petunia tell you about Hogwarts?” he asked. “Where do you think your parents learned magic?”

Harry was now even more confused, “Magic, sir? And how do you know my aunt?”

The man rubbed his hands down his face in apparent exhaustion, mumbling to himself about stubborn old men. “I should not be the one to tell you this,” he muttered. He hid his face in his hands for a few moments before looking up at Harry with a softer expression than the previous sneers. “I’m going to make sure someone comes to explain this all to you, it shouldn’t be me. Where are your relatives? I’m going to take you back.”

Harry was still confused about everything that had been said but he was also desperate to get out of this strange man’s house, so he nodded his head as the man un-froze his limbs with his stick. “They’re at the Railview Hotel, sir. I can make my way back from here.”

The man snorted, “Your father couldn’t stay out of trouble so I doubt you can. I’ll apparate you.”

“You’ll wha- “Harry started to ask but was interrupted as the man clasped his arm and the world twisted around them. After a dizzying experience, Harry felt himself land hard on the ground on his hands and knees, where he dry heaved and was sure he would have vomited if he had eaten anything that day.

The black-haired man put a steadying hand on his back as his stomach contracted and said, “Most people vomit the first time, I apologize.”

Harry tried to nod but had to wait until the world stopped spinning around him. He looked up as the man crouched down beside him. He tapped Harry’s mouth with his stick, which suddenly tasted like he had just brushed his teeth with strong peppermint toothpaste. Harry was too overwhelmed to even try to comprehend this mystery.

Still in his crouch, the man cupped Harry’s face with a stained and calloused hand and looked him directly in the eyes. Harry looked back apprehensively.

The man took a deep breath. “I know you will not remember this, but I will watch over you Harry. I am sorry I have to treat you so badly in school. I’ll protect you for Lily.”

Harry just stared back with furrowed brows, trying to figure out what was being said to him.

“You have her eyes,” he said in a soft voice, before standing from his crouch, while Harry looked up at him. He raised his stick.

_“Obliviate.”_

X

_They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table._

_“’Scuse me, but is one of you Mr. H. Potter? Only I got about an ’undred of these at the front desk.”_

_She held up a letter so they could read the green ink address:_

_Mr. H. Potter_

_Room 17_

_Railview Hotel_

_Cokeworth_

_Harry made a grab for the letter, but Uncle Vernon knocked his hand out of the way. The woman stared._

_“I’ll take them,” said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room._

When Harry met Hagrid, he felt a funny swoop in his stomach when the half giant said – “ _but yeh’ve got yer mum’s eyes_.”

When Harry met the eyes of Professor Snape in the Great Hall for the first time, he wondered why he felt like they had met before.

When Dumbledore apparated him to find Slughorn, Harry wondered why he managed not to throw up when most people did their first time.

When Snape was dying in the Shrieking Shack – _“Look at me”_ – Harry didn’t understand the significance until he was in the pensieve in the Headmaster’s office, head reeling with the thought that he had to die and with the memory of a little boy who met a man in Cokeworth.

_“I will watch over you Harry.”_

When Harry uses the resurrection stone in the forest, Snape appears with his parents and Remus and Sirius, and Harry tells him _“Thank you.”_


End file.
